I arrived in Italy in June and made my way straight to the beautiful hilltown of Orvieto, north of Rome. Across from my hotel was the amazing duomo, famous for its facade and the horizontal banding inside and out. I went a bit nuts with this sketch, as I only had 1.5 hours till my taxi would arrive, so my pencil and watercolor flew!! (I've added this sketch again at the bottom of the post so that you can click on it and see the detail--same for all these sketches!)
I walked around town and did 5 sketches all in the same day...I was trying out a new sketchbook, the 7"x10" Pentalic AquaJournal--the paper I knew well but the format and size were totally new to me. It occurred to me that I might not have enough pages in the sketchbook to last for 6 weeks of travel, so I decided to do 2 images per page...in the end, it became a format I would repeat everywhere I went, as I loved being able to see sketches side by side.
Below are my 5 sketches from Orvieto (makes me think I should always sketch with jet lag!)
To the left is my favorite of the sequence sketches, done late in the day in the heat...
For me, Urban Sketching is about capturing my experiences on paper and learning about what I see through the act of drawing and painting...so all these are sketched and painted on location.
This was the view from my hotel window!
The taxi arrived on time, and I headed off to Civita for the workshop! (Click on the duomo interior sketch to see the detail...)
[by Stephanie Bower, Seattle] I am finally back in my studio, after over two months of travel mostly for teaching and some for work. Alas, it was pretty much impossible for me to post ot the blog while traveling. Days were packed and often I had little to no internet! I did manage to post some to Instagram, as it loaded on my phone when the blog or Facebook or Flickr would not...so please, I invite you to see my posts on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stephanieabower/
For the fifth summer, I had the wonderful opportunity to teach a workshop in the amazing Italian hilltown of Civita di Bagnoregio. It is a speck of a town, you can walk it from end to end in about 5 minutes, and it is only accessible by a steep foot bridge and thus has no cars. You feel transported back to the Middle Ages, but for all the tourists. Civita is remarkably picturesque, Rick Steves says it is his favorite Italian hilltown.
This year, I taught two workshops back-to-back, and since it was roasting hot, we sketched inside the cool, dark chiesa and worked on really "Understanding Perspective"! I love the simplicity and scale of this church, and it is filled with interesting relics from the past. There was likely an Etruscan temple on this spot nearly 3000 years ago.
Below is how I teach people to start perspective sketches--I start a sketch like this with what I call drawing the "Shape of the Space". Then I use the eye level line and VP to construct the bones of the sketch. You can see how I draw the entire ellipse to help me draw the arches.
I kept this drawing and colors very simple, letting the openings in the arches recede by painting them a cool blue...painting like an architect to make sure the spaces read.
More sketches will follow, including a dozen or so from Italy, then Holland, then England...and of course, there was Chicago...
Thanks to everyone who participated in the workshops and to The Civita Institute for their support of this opportunity! Ciao, tutti!
